the state strategic plan

in a response to
Repost: How academic corporatism can lead to dictatorship
below,

LST said...

You can post this a thousand times. It gets better with every read.

What is truly interesting about the fiasco at UT is that nothing in the State's strategic plan requires or even hints at the dictatorial crap that we face day to day, though everything they're doing is supposedly linked to the state's new strategic plan. Indeed, it calls for strong liberal arts, consultative leadership, and explicitly for thinking of "areas of excellence" as complementary to--not exclusive of--traditional areas of scholarly activity.

A&S Council would do well to invest in nice printed copies of the state's strategic plan for every member of the college. It might actually save us.

i am not sure i agree. the state strategic plan was written by the benevolent dictator chancellor fingerhut, who with the governor has taken power away from the regents. in essence, it is just as much a top-down document as our strategic plan is. now, i have not read the plan in detail, but the executive summary has three disturbing paragraphs:

The University System of Ohio will end the counter-productive competition among institutions for scarce resources. The historic strengths and traditions of our individual universities will be
drawn upon to create distinctive missions for each, leading to the establishment of nationally and
internationally-recognized Centers of Excellence that will be drivers of both the regional and state economies and that will complement the comprehensive, quality education available at each institution. Each institution will delineate these Centers of Excellence, together with specific goals and measurements by which the goals can be evaluated.
This paragraph in and of itself is not so bad, if by "Centers of Excellence" one does not mean departmental programs.

High-quality associate and bachelor’s programs in core fields will be made available at a University System of Ohio campus within 30 miles of every Ohioan, utilizing the existing
infrastructure of community colleges and regional campuses. These associate and bachelor’s degrees will be among the lowest cost available anywhere in the country.

The Board of Regents will implement the Ohio Skills Bank to link industry demand to workforce
supply in the state’s 12 economic development regions. Demand for employment in each
region will be measured against the supply of students and programs available, and the programs offered will be adjusted accordingly.
these two paragraphs suggest that economic forces will drive programs and curricula.

The plan is not all bad; there are many opportunities present to grow a wide variety of programs IF the chancellor sees the value in those programs. the problem is that this is a one-pony show, which will flop back and forth as different administrations come into office. anyway, that is my take.

i would certainly like to see further discussion of the state plan; my misgivings may be misplaced. the plan is located at

• View Strategic Plan
• View Executive Summary of the Strategic Plan

i recommend that all of our comments be posted as original documents rather than as "comments" - that way they are more likely to be noticed.